Review: DIRTY BLOOD Serves Up Its Revenge Tale with a Twist
Originally seen during the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) 2012 As a society Korea has been slow to change despite its economic growth. At times it can seem like a gigantic, perpetually simmering pot of discontent that seems dangerously... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: The Calamitous ZOMBIE 108
Of the many genres out there available for our consumption, the zombie film holds a very special place in our cinematic diet. It is actually a subgenre, being an offshoot of horror but, just like the vampire film, it... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: THE CRUCIBLE
Among the Korean independent fare at this year's PiFan there were some wonderful works that will likely enjoy healthy festival runs and should find wider audiences but along with the good there is inevitably going to be some bad.... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: THE SUICIDE SHOP 3D
Animation was featured quite prominently at this year's PiFan, with Japanese works such as Gyo, Rainbow Fireflies, Blood C: The Last Dark, not to mention some retrospectives on the Space Battleship Yamamoto series and Czech animation. Sadly, by the... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: VULGARIA is Lewd, Crude & Flat-out Hilarious

[After bagging the Netpac Award at PiFan last week, and enjoying weekend previews in Hong Kong ahead of its theatrical release next Thursday, now seems the perfect time to revisit my review from HKIFF back in March] Not content with... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: SUPER VIRGIN
What is it that draws us time and again to narratives following socially-awkward men who are trying to lose their virginity? My first thought was that these provide a vicarious thrill for male cinema-goers but actually, these films tend to... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: FOR LOVE'S SAKE (AI TO MAKOTO) Is A Toe-Tapping Delight
How do you begin to describe Ai to Matoko, the new film from Miike Takashi, the prolific, ever-eclectic Japanese director behind such diverse works as Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q and 13 Assassins? Barely a month seems to go... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: OVER MY DEAD BODY
Comedy is a curious beast even at the best of times. Across the world's national film industries, thrillers, horrors, romances and action films share many common elements, while comedy tends to be fall in line with indigenously codes. I've said... More »
  

PIFAN 2012 Review: THE BRAT!

[As it screened last week at PiFan 2012, it seems the perfect opportunity to take another look at my earlier review from Yubari, where the film took home three awards]We all harbour certain insecurities about our appearance, upon which some... More »
  

PIFAN 2012 Review: ROOM 237 Takes A Deranged Axe To Kubrick's THE SHINING
There are few films that have the power to truly haunt their audience in a way Stanley Kubrick's The Shining does, and continues to do, 30 years after its initial release. Like many of Kubrick's films, it received a relatively... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: LET ME OUT

Mu Young (Kwon Hyung Sang) is a frustrated, yet also frustrating, film student in his final year. He is opinionated, critical and easy to attack the works of his classmates and other filmmakers, but has still yet to produce anything... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: HORROR STORIES
Omnibus horrors seem to be all the rage at this year's PiFan, with the inclusion of the much-ballyhooed V/H/S and the Indonesian ghost offering Hi5teria (not to be confused with period British vibrator comedy Histeria, which is also in competition).... More »
  

PiFan 2012 Review: 90 MINUTES
It's a rare thing to sit down to a film and know just from the opening shot how bad it's going to be. Sadly this was the case for me at the world premiere of 90 Minutes, a new low-budget... More »
  

PIFAN 2012 Review: YOUNG GUN IN THE TIME
Last year's Yubari Grand Prix winner - and the only non-Japanese filmmaker to win the award - South Korean director Oh Young Doo returns to the wintry city with his follow-up to Invasion Of Alien Bikini, the time-travel detective thriller... More »
  

PIFAN 2012 Review: BELENGGU Brings Bunnies, Blood and Beauty
The opening of Belenggu (aka Shackled), could not be more promising. In the dead of night, a woman half hidden behind by a headscarf and sunglasses, drives down a remote stretch of country road. A panicked and bedraggled young man... More »
  

Pre-PiFan 2012 Review: A Look at Last Year's Big Winner BLOODY FIGHT IN IRON-ROCK VALLEY
Low-budget filmmakers love to dabble in genre fare and, despite inexperience and other shortcomings, they often wind up making more pertinent and exciting works than more established helmers, who may have lost their youthful filmmaking pizzazz. Horror is particularly popular... More »
  

Review: ALWAYS
Apparently someone told Song Il-Gon (Flower Island, A Feather, Magicians) that exquisite lo-fi indie character studies are all very well, but they don't pay the bills. Try a melodrama, they must have said. Try something so syrupy it'll have Koreans... More »
  

Review: HINDSIGHT
There's a terrific story lost somewhere inside Lee Hyun-Seung's Hindsight. That's part of the problem, really - there's enough different ideas for an epic, even a miniseries. An amiable jopok enforcer trying to go straight. A hotly contested last will... More »
  

UK DVD Review: PARKED
If you're going to make a movie that relies heavily on symbolism, you need either a particularly light touch, or to be bold enough about it people get swept away by your vision, no matter how daft it might come... More »
  

Blu-ray Review: TYRANNOSAUR
The opening sequence in Paddy Considine's brilliant Tyrannosaur is a model of cinematic efficiency so concise they ought to teach it in film school. Revisiting the events of Considine's original short Dog Altogether and turning them into a full-blown feature,... More »
  
 
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Part of the (heated) discussion about my take on After Earth surrounded the dicey proposition, popularized by the "Cahiers du Cinema" crowd in the 50s, that a director's work is to be considered part of a continuous process of development, an oeuvre with authorial consistency.Frank Zappa called it "conceptual continuity",... More »
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